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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26004973">and the image that was in the blood</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/livid/pseuds/livid'>livid</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst with an unhappy ending, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, M/M, Season 2 compliant</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 04:07:27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Explicit</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death, Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>7,037</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26004973</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/livid/pseuds/livid</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“While many of the skills core to espionage require a working knowledge of human psychology and anatomy, few require so exacting a combination of the two as the art of seduction.”</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Klaus Hargreeves/David "Dave" Katz</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>85</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>and the image that was in the blood</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>this fic has some v explicit underage sex, so if that squicks you then I recommend u proceed with caution</p><p>this fic is about cliches, nihilism, and becoming your parents. so, enjoy!</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>- September, 2003 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>He groans as the fist clenches, the hair on his nape pulling taut. His mouth is wet and cavernous, throat choking tight on petal soft skin. </p><p>“You’re so hot,” the guy says, big brown hand clasping at the turn of his jaw. He sucks and slurps. The guy groans unselfconsciously. “A plus for enthusiasm, kid.” Klaus swallows, hitches a breath in through his runny nose. The scratch of pubic hair against his lip feels heavenly. His skin is hot and tingling. His cock throbs. </p><p>“Fuck,” the guy grips his neck, and the pressure rockets him close to the edge. “Fuck, yeah. Fuck.” </p><p>Klaus swallows again, pushes closer, deeper, lost and euphoric. The collar of his shirt is soaking. The stench of the bathroom is high and reeling. He pulls off, gasping for breath. The guy’s hand circles his. “Can I come on your face?” </p><p>“Yeah,” Klaus heaves. He looks up into black, heavy eyes. Watches the movement of their hands, transfixed. The hot splash of it shocks him, jolts him, sets his eyes stinging. Makes his stomach twist, over and over. Round and round.</p><p>“Do you want me to jerk you off?” </p><p>“Yeah,” Klaus hiccups, is hauled to his feet. The guy presses a lush kiss to his cheek as he tears his pants open, gets a callused hand on his dick. Klaus gasps at the liquid contact. “You’ll get the hang of it,” the guy whispers in his ear. “It won’t always be this hard.”</p><p>Klaus moans, and the guy’s hand twists. </p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <strong>- September, 2003 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>The look Ben gives him is almost withering, like he’s trying it out. An almost-adult expression. Honing the skill of being the world’s biggest buzz kill - but he hasn’t got the hang of it yet. Isn’t quite sure. </p><p>“What?” Klaus is learning the use of eyebrows, and Ben is susceptible to it, still. </p><p>“Sex as self-punishment, don’t you think that’s a bit…” he trails off, and Klaus flaps his hand in dismissal. It isn’t self-punishment, that should be obvious.</p><p>“I guess it’s better than other things,” Ben concedes. Klaus tactfully doesn’t mention that they aren’t mutually exclusive. Later, he would, but not then. None of them have emerged from their crystalis’ yet. Blissfully unaware that it would all look childish after the trial by fire, or at least the first one, and all the others that followed. </p><p>“You’re using protection, right?” Ben says, like it’s a foregone conclusion, Klaus would never be so stupid. Klaus nods emphatically, but, of course, he isn’t.</p><p>“I’m good at it,” Klaus says. “Or I’m getting good at it.” This is meaningful, he doesn’t say, because at the tender age of 14 Klaus has still utterly failed to excel at anything. Except maybe pissing Luther off. And Dad. And Pogo. And Diego. And Allison. And Ben, sometimes.</p><p>Okay, maybe he has a skill.</p><p>“I guess,” Ben says, and he says it alot, then. “I just don’t know much about it. Except for Dad’s lectures,” he crinkles his nose. “And, ew. Are there really that many, like, fluids?”</p><p>Klaus gives him a look, which isn’t as adult as he thinks it is, either.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
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<br/>
</p><p>
  <strong>- January, 2004 - </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>“You never sucked a cock before?” <em> This </em> guy’s southern, the shape of his vowels a stretched, cajun patois.</p><p>Klaus laughs, “I mean not never.”</p><p>The guy chuckles good humouredly, ruffles his hair. It's jarringly paternalistic. “I’m not complainin’, jus’ looks like yer straining yerself. Relax.”</p><p>Klaus breathes in deeply. The guy rubs his cock against the jut of his cheekbone, a slow, heavy trail down to the mou of his mouth. Over his lip. Inside. Back across his cheek again.</p><p>“Yeah,” the guy says. “Like that.” Klaus bobs. “Breathe deep,” the guy says, then pushes his cock to the back of his throat, beyond. Klaus’ eyes roll. The guy chuckles again, laboured. He pulls out and Klaus gasps. Klaus beats him to the punch next time and the guy scratches his neck, a stinging affirmation. “Eager.” </p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
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</p><p>
  <strong>- July, 2006 - </strong>
</p><p> </p><p>“How do you do it?” Diego huffs in frustration, the cuffs of his sweater straining over white knuckled fists. </p><p>“Do what?” Luther intones, shovelling another forkfull of scrambled eggs into his mouth. There’s a book open in front of him, something about Caligula. His great military strategies and heretical malalignment, probably. Sparse on the explicit paedophilia.</p><p>Diego heaves, eyebrows twisting in annoyance. He’s speaking slowly and deliberately, so he won’t stutter. “Make a girl come.”</p><p>Luther drops his fork. Klaus giggles. Luther’s eyes bulge. </p><p>“Oh, uh,” he says, swallowing. “I think you have to, uh, stimulate the clitoris.” Silence drops like a penny. He picks his fork back up. None of them look at each other.</p><p>“Like you’d know,” Klaus guffaws, embarrassedly, just to fill the silence, and Diego blushes bright red.</p><p>“Like you’d know,” Luther mimics, and Klaus throws a rolled up wad of tissue at him. It lands right between his eyes and Luther glowers.</p><p>“I’ve had sex with girls,” Klaus informs them hautily. He has. A lot of it. The mood strikes frequently, and it’s definitely fun. Not always his first preference, but not a chore either. All sorts of bodies can do all sorts of things - and if there’s one thing Klaus knows how to play, it’s the odds. </p><p>“Sure,” Diego sneers, and he and Luther share a look - the kind only straight boys can share, transparent and unwittingly pathetic. Klaus feels outnumbered, but absolutely not beaten.</p><p>“I have!” Klaus protests, but it falls on deaf ears. He’s long given up on trying to convince Diego and Luther of anything, especially when it comes to sex. They seem to think he’s constitutionally incapable of getting laid, which is laughable and cute, but also kind of insulting.</p><p>Diego barrels on, “I mean, I did everything in those diagrams Dad gave us, I went down on her for like <em> half an hour </em>, and nothing. Nothing. That’s weird, right? I know I couldn’t last half an hour with a mouth on my dick.”</p><p>“I guess it’s true that premature ejaculation strikes at all ag-”</p><p>“Maybe she was one of those girls who just can’t orgasm,” Luther cuts Klaus off, tone steely and buffetted. He looks like a beached fish, gasping, so out of his element he might just suffocate.</p><p>“That’s just a lie straight men tell themselves to feel bett-”</p><p>“Maybe you just need to work on your technique,” Luther proffers, like an olive branch, or a wrecking ball. Diego looks like he’s not only regretting this conversation, but his entire life. All of their lives. The unfortunate and uncanny accident that birthed the universe.</p><p>“Yeah,” Diego swallows, and jerks back out of his chair, burning scarlet across the bridge of his nose, the tops of his ears, the dark sweep of his hairline. </p><p>“Dick,” Luther says, when he’s gone. Klaus doesn’t dignify this with a response, goes back to his game of Snake. Later, at Dinner, Klaus watches him carefully avoiding Allison’s eyes, and sniggers.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
<br/>
</p><p>
  <strong>- November, 2017 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>The sound that comes out of Rami’s mouth is profane, utterly profane. Pornographic, but better, because porn has always felt like a cheap and artless imitation in comparison to this - the wet velvet clench on his fingers, the heady musk, his body slipping away from him, whatever passes for his spirit vacating, streaking out and away, replaced by hot, slick, rippling muscle. The rash of blush across neck and shoulders, down the sternum; the thin and bruising skin of the inner thigh. The impossible, electric crush of it. </p><p>“You’re so fucking good at that,” Rami gasps, after a while, once he comes. He heaves, eyes fluttering, his body a lax, shaking masterpiece of sculpted muscle and dark, bitten bruises. He won’t be moving for a while. </p><p>Klaus wobbles to the en suite and wets a face towel, scrubs at the sticky curls on his pubic bone, the sweaty hollow behind his balls. His eyes look sunken in the mirror. He makes a face at the ghoul in the reflection, at Ben’s expert disapproval, and turns off the light.</p><p>“This place is nice,” he hums in the doorway, and it really is. Minimalism has never been his schtick, but the pinkish-clay of the accent wall speaks to him. He’s a sucker for terracotta, for granite and exposed brick. The crack den he’s crashing in isn’t exactly a showcase of professional interior design, but it serves a function. It does have some lovely art deco detailing, though. </p><p>Rami jolts when he drops the towel on his stomach, starting back to life. He laughs faintly as he cleans his own cum out of his belly button, the hard line of his abs shaking lightly. He looks utterly blissed out. Klaus lights a joint.</p><p>“Can I crash here?” He asks, unwinding the window. It barely opens a sliver. There’s probably not a smoke alarm near the bedroom, but if there’s one thing worse than answering to cops, Luther, or his father, it’s answering to boujie midtown strata. He could never be high enough to handle<em> that </em>, he knows from experience. When he hunches down to the opening, his back crackles with pain.</p><p>“Yeah,” Rami breathes, and Klaus starts to shiver as the sweat dries on his skin. “Sure, whatever.”</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>
  <strong>- June, 2003 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>After breakfast, and their morning drills, they file into the library. The seats are hard, as always, but with the hangover Klaus is nursing they feel like a lovingly crafted torture. He could swear his Dad shaped the hickory himself, in order to maximise the jut and cut of the fretwork. It might as well be an iron chair. He would, the old bastard.</p><p>At the edge of his vision, he sees Vanya’s eye peek around the doorframe. She disappears as he grins.</p><p>Without prelude, Reginald <em> expounds </em>:</p><p>“While many of the skills core to espionage require a working knowledge of human psychology and anatomy, few require so exacting a combination of the two as the art of seduction.” </p><p>Two seats along, Diego chokes. At the opposite end, Ben’s eyes boggle. Klaus’ grin widens in delight. </p><p>“It is imperative to your education that you master this art, both for the efficacy of infiltrative missions, and a general proficiency at forming and exploiting the vulnerabilities of your enemies and accomplices alike. The bonding power of oxytocin can be a vital tool in forcing others to overcome inhibitions, suspend skepticism, and to risk their own livelihoods and safety - as well as the livelihoods and safety of their family and peers - in order to further mission goals and protect mission interests. In this sense, your own sexual proclivities and gratification are completely irrelevant - servicing the mark to the greatest degree possible, including emotionally, takes precedence before all else.”</p><p>Dad whips away the first sheet on the board, revealing a series of annotated diagrams of the body’s erogenous zones. Luther shifts in his seat. </p><p>“While many cultures elevate sexual intimacy to a ludicrous degree of significance, and subsequently moralise it’s modes and procedures - both for the purpose of individual aggrandisement and social control - it is a mechanistic enterprise that can be mastered like any other.”</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>
  <strong>- May, 1968 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>He’s up to his neck in the water when Private (?) Katz, maybe (?) finds him, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth. The pool is shallow and a little greasy, but it keeps off the mosquitos, and the humidity. There are critters nibbling at the dead skin on his feet. </p><p>“Hargreeves, right?” he asks as he drops down onto a nearby log, tugs at the lacing of his boots. </p><p>Klaus winks flatly, mostly out of habit. “That’s me.”</p><p>Katz strips off his undershirt shirt, shucks his trousers, his briefs, then slides down through the water’s edge. It’s neat and efficient. Usually Klaus would take the time to appreciate the view, his broad shoulders and sharp serratus, the mottled pink of fresh shrapnel scars, the heavy sway of his dick, but he’s distracted. A monument to pain.</p><p>The Major who’d confiscated his briefcase had been a hardass <em> and </em> a pedant, and blatantly homophobic to boot. Klaus could have been less alarmed about the whole ‘accidentally getting thrown back in time and trapped in the Vietnam War’ thing if he hadn’t immediately gotten the shit kicked out of him, or had a way to leave. Or if he knew enough about when and where he was to come up with a more convincing lie than whatever nonsense had come out of his mouth.</p><p>By the time they’d dragged him into the command tent he’d managed to come up with some bullshit about being separated from his unit, but they’d taken him for a deserter instead, which wasn’t something they were particularly gentle about either. Allison had always been much better at this than he was. Lying.</p><p>“You look like shit,” Katz tells him, and Klaus laughs, drops the cigarette into the water, moans a little at the bereavement. </p><p>“Tell me how you really feel,” he says, throwing its disintegrating form back to the waterline, and Katz inclines his head in amusement as he kneels down in the shallow water, feeling across the mossy stones and slippery leaflitter for somewhere to sit. The night air is hot and sticky and the sound of insects is deafening. </p><p>“Where’d you really come from?” Katz asks, in a tone that’s almost conversational. He’s clearly curious about Klaus’ sudden appearance, but also completely prepared to be told to fuck off.</p><p>“The future,” Klaus hums. He floats his arms through the water in slow arcs, watching the rippling reflection, letting himself drop into a kind of blank, waking unconscious, away from the pain. He knows the spoiled water is probably the last thing his broken, grazed body needs at this point, but he can’t stand the itching, the incessant itching, and he figures it’ll be a lot easier to steal antiseptic cream from the medics than retrieve the briefcase, since Katz is tailing him. But maybe he doesn’t have to. Maybe he’ll even be nice about it, ask them to set his ribs. </p><p>“From a glittering, utopian city of glass and steel.” </p><p>Katz huffs. “I’ve been to New York. It’s not that glittery. Pretty dirty, actually.”</p><p>“Maybe you were in the wrong part of New York.” Klaus brings his fingers up, mesmerised by the push and pull of the water tension. “Some bars have more glitter than furniture. Or undiluted alcohol, for that matter, the cheapskates.”</p><p>Katz smiles, squints up at the stars peeking through the canopy, his mouth twisting. “You’re a queer.” It comes out as a statement, the tone of it not-quite accusatory. Klaus unknots a little. Drops fear like a stone.</p><p>“What gave it away?”</p><p>“You know if you’d told them when you got the conscription letter they probably would have disqualified you. Saved you a lot of trouble. And me.”</p><p>“Maybe,” Klaus says, shrugging. He doesn’t say: I’ve never needed to <em> tell </em> anyone. He doesn’t say: when you’re cannon fodder, they don’t care. “But here I am.”</p><p>“Here you are,” Katz confirms, and when Klaus looks up at him his gaze is surprisingly gentle.</p><p>Klaus smiles, and he smiles back, the tops of his cheeks pinking.</p><p>“Hey,” Klaus asks, “do you know where I can get some H?”</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>
  <strong>- November, 2018 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>“Klaus!” </p><p>He speeds up, hugging his coat tighter around him, wishing for all the world he could wink out of existence, or at least that there was somewhere to hide. He’s trying to turn the corner into a stinking, middenous alley, when a hand grabs at his sleeve. “Hey, Klaus.” He turns into a bright and grinning face; one which startles a little, to see him in the daylight. </p><p>Luke, he thinks, from a month ago, maybe. Big dick but not very imaginative. An unfortunately common combination.</p><p>“Hey,” he smiles, dusting an exaggerated kiss to the top of the boy’s flawless cheekbone. “Fancy running into you here.” </p><p>He reeks, he knows he reeks. Like an ashtray, and fumes. A black cloud of burnt rubber, the stench of poverty coming off him like a wall, or a ward. He’s ratty as all hell, and he smells. Luke leans back, tries to shutter the expression of repulsion.</p><p>“You never called,” he says, with forced cheer, but under it sullenness sits heavy on his fresh, unlined face. Klaus squashes a pang of guilt, kills it.</p><p>“Oh well, you know how it is,” he says, fiddling with the bulb of the crack pipe in his pocket. He’s getting antsy, exposed on the street like this, and the neat, expensive wool of the boy’s jacket elicits a fleeting wave of rage. He looks away, smiles stiffly, and takes a step back. He has places to be.</p><p>“Um,” Luke says, starting after him. “No, I uh. I don’t.” Klaus swallows, walks a little faster. “I mean, we had a really good time. I did, anyway. I thought -”</p><p>“What did you think?” Klaus bites out, bitter laughter bubbling out of him, sticking in his throat. The edges of his eyes sting. He knows the script by heart now, has catalogued every version of it, can recite it in his sleep. When he speaks again it’s forced too, and cavalier. “Don’t get me wrong, I had fun, and you were good, really, but it didn’t<em> mean </em> anything. It was just a romp. A joyride. An athletic exercise in somatic bliss.”</p><p>Luke’s mouth drops open in stunned offence. “But,” he starts.</p><p>“But nothing,” Klaus says. “I’m sorry if I gave you the impression that I was more invested than I am, but I’m not. And believe me, I’m doing you a favour anyway.”</p><p>“I just,” Luke stammers, expressions sleeting across his face. “No one’s ever made me feel like that before. It seemed like - it felt incredible, like we had a connection. It was special. You didn’t feel that?”</p><p>Klaus shudders. A nosey woman at the passing stop light whips around when he smiles at her winsomely.</p><p>Luke is silent for a moment, the gears in his head ticking over. When he starts after Klaus again, his posture is tightening, jerky, winding up for a fight. Maybe he’d practiced it in his head, Klaus thinks. Maybe he has a script too. “And what - what do you mean, <em> doing me a favour </em>? A favour is lending someone twenty bucks. A favour is driving someone to the airport! Leaving someone hanging for weeks is not a favour!”</p><p>The vivid indignation looks good on him, Klaus thinks. The resentment makes it easier.</p><p>He stops, suddenly, smoothes his hands down Luke’s arms in a conciliatory gesture. It’s theatrical, patronising, acerbic, and Luke balks, his chest heaving. Pissed. He looks ready to punch someone. Klaus, probably. He’d deserve it, he usually does.</p><p>“No, I mean. You don’t want to date me, kid, believe me. You literally could not make a worse decision. And I’m not going to trap you in here with me, I’m not making that mistake again. I know what I am, and <em> you don’t want it </em>, ok.”</p><p>He looks like he’s chewing on his own tongue, his own shattered ego. “You can’t make that decision for me,” Luke spits, finally, but Klaus can see he doesn’t have to. The heat rolling off of him says it all, and Klaus is impressed, actually, by the stinging self-possession. The level-headed pique. Good for him.</p><p>“Look,” Klaus sighs, and gestures to himself by way of explanation. “I’m a mess. An addict, a parasite,” he laughs, “a <em> murderer </em> . Too fucked up to know how I’m getting through the next ten minutes, much less the next day, or week. And that’s how I like it! This is what I want!” Luke’s eyes scrunch. Klaus’ chest is a maw. He feels almost hysterical, weightless, like he’s floating right out of his body. “I’m not even a <em> person </em>. Just - meet someone, someone who deserves you - I don’t know, a graphic designer, or something! Get married and adopt some kids and buy the house with the white picket fence and the dog and be normal. Happy, if you can! Forget I ever even existed!”</p><p>Luke’s mouth twists in scorn and the expression is so like Five that Klaus is struck with a rabid deja vu. “Do you even hear yourself?” he says. “Do you listen to the words that come out of your own mouth? Not a person,” he scoffs. Klaus is emptied and utterly vacant. Gone. “You know, life isn’t easy for any of us. We’ve all been through shit. But not everyone uses it as an excuse to act like a complete dick. To treat people like they’re disposable.” </p><p>Klaus looks at his clenched fists, jaw. The anger that speaks to solidity. <em> You have no idea </em> , he thinks. <em> None </em>. </p><p>Maybe this will be a learning experience. Some kind of grace.</p><p>“Whatever,” Luke says, finally. His friend is lingering half a block away, on her phone, pretending not to be paying rapt attention. Luke makes in the opposite direction, towards her. “Go to hell.”</p><p>Klaus watches his receding back, buffs his sunglasses on the cuff of his jacket. “Waaaay ahead of you.” </p><p>Ben crosses his arms. “Do you even remember his name?”</p><p>‘Nah,” Klaus shrugs.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>
  <strong>- June, 1968 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>Afterwards, Dave puts his mouth to the curve of Klaus’ bicep, eyes lowered in a thoughtful frown.</p><p>“Why do you always do that?” he asks, but Klaus doesn’t stop focusing on the joint in his hands, tries to wet his mouth, licks at the strip of glue with a parched tongue. Has to do it twice. He isn’t really paying attention, but he usually isn’t, so Dave knocks his forehead against his shoulder, jostles his foot. Like always, he’s curiously unoffended. Serene. Watching. </p><p>“Do what?” </p><p>Dave looks up at him, briefly, then away again. His smile is wistful and transparent. “You never let me suck you off all the way. Never let me get you off first.”</p><p>Klaus pauses, shrugs. “I dunno,” he says, his heart clenching. “Just an idiosyncrasy.” </p><p>Dave smiles, again. “Sure,” he says. Klaus looks away, again. “Sure.”</p><p><br/>
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</p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>- June, 1968 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>Dave touches his hand, fingers light on the white of his knuckles.</p><p>Klaus blinks. “What happened?” </p><p>He looks around the moonless night - Dave crouching in the moss before him, his face deathly pale. Ramirez a few feet away, gun slung across his knees, staring into nothingness. McKenzie kicking at the dirt, toggling the safety on his rifle in a staccato rhythm. Sarge, scribbling in his notebook. When he looks at Klaus his face is a mask of subdued terror.</p><p>Klaus licks his lips. “I don’t remember.” Dave swallows.</p><p>“What are you?” McKenzie asks, pacing, his voice an expressionless line. “Special Ops? They send you here?”</p><p>Klaus shakes his head. His hands are black with blood. He can’t feel anything.</p><p>“I met one of those MK Ultra boys, back in Saigon,” McKenzie continues, his eyes moving in wide, empty circles. “Ruthless. Crazy. Didn’t have a scratch on you.”</p><p>“I don’t -” Klaus begins.</p><p>“You don’t remember,” McKenzie finishes. “Yeah.”</p><p>Dave’s eyes are searching. Klaus closes his.</p><p><em> I have suddenly awoken in the midst of this dream, </em> Klaus thinks. It comes in Reggie’s practiced cadence. </p><p>
  <em> But only to the consciousness that I am dreaming, and that I must go on dreaming in order not to be destroyed. </em>
</p><p>This time, when Dave touches him, Klaus wrenches away.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>
  <strong>- March, 2018 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>When he looks up at the tv, he sees his sister.</p><p>She’s always been beautiful, always been something apart from the rest of them, but seeing her soundless smiling face, here, in rehab, is like being stabbed. She looks ecstatic, happy, acting out some choreographed romance, and it looks so real he almost believes it.</p><p>Klaus knows it isn’t. He doesn’t believe it.</p><p>He wipes at his snotty nose, yanks the coarse blanket tighter around his shoulders. He can’t stop shivering, feels feverish, his brain splitting in a thousand directions, wretched with boredom, chafing at the edges of his own skin. </p><p>The subtitles read: <em> There’s nothing more that I want more than this, to have a family with you, to make a life together.  </em></p><p>He laughs.</p><p>On the bunk above him, Simmons hums appreciatively. “She’s real pretty.”</p><p>Klaus punches the mattress weakly, and aches. “If I hear you jerking off to my sister I swear to god I’ll piss in your coffee.”</p><p>He doesn’t hear the response as he rushes to the toilet, but they’re laughing, too.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>
  <strong>- May, 2006 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>When Klaus comes out to have a cigarette, Diego’s in the courtyard, kicking a soccer ball into the target painted in the space between two windows. His arm’s still in a sling, after the dislocation, but he never could sit still. It’s one of the few things they have in common.</p><p>Klaus flinches bodily when the ball comes towards him, but it misses him by feet. Diego scoops it up with his good arm and drops back against the wall next to him, heavy and careless of his shoulder. He huffs, but doesn’t talk at first, and Klaus can see him thinking - he wears it on his face, clear as day, like it could never be used against him. Which is precious. Naive. </p><p>Klaus feels a rush of affection.</p><p>“I’m pretty sure this is a contravention of, like, a bunch of UN conventions.” </p><p>“Probably,” Klaus says, drunk and amiable. Fuzzy at the edges. This conversation’s been going for months now, years maybe. Klaus is no stranger to dead ends, but this one’s wounding. </p><p>Ben’s dead, and Klaus put him in a jar, and Diego’s like a dog with a bone, as always. Stubborn, stubborn. Still hanging on to hope.</p><p>“Like it’s questionable whether or not we constitute a militia since having super powers doesn’t necessarily count as ‘armed’, and a non-militarised zone can’t be classed as a battlefield, but Dad would probably count as a civil or corporate interest. You <em> might </em> be able to argue we’re being used as mercenaries, definitely proxy-vigilantes. And him like, actually <em> buying </em> us, that has to mean something in terms of human trafficking, right? Seems like it’s probably super illegal.”</p><p>“What’s legality got to do with it?” Klaus hums, letting his head drop back against the wall. The texture of the brick is a hard, pleasant friction. </p><p>“There are whole federal police departments dedicated to fighting human trafficking, you know. It’s this whole big deal. You don’t think six kids in the middle of New York City being trained as whacked out super soldiers wouldn’t interest them?”</p><p>“Seven,” Klaus says, but Diego shakes his head in dismissal and drops the soccer ball, bouncing it in a fluid back and forth between his foot and his knee. He makes it look stupidly easy. Probably using his powers, Klaus thinks. Though maybe not.</p><p>“Seems to me like it’d be a big break. Make someone’s career, blowing this shit wide open.”</p><p>“Whatever gets blown open, it wouldn’t be their <em> career </em>,” Klaus laughs.</p><p>Diego hisses in frustration. “All I’m saying is,” he continues, “anyone who finds out what a total fucking psychopath he is is gonna have to do something about it. It’d be like a, a - an ethical and moral imperative. They couldn’t not.”</p><p>Klaus closes his eyes. “There are a lot of people who already know, Diego. The whole world knows. We’re not a secret.”</p><p>“Yeah they know, but do they <em> know </em>. And no one’s gonna go running to the cops without substantive evidence, which only we can provide. It’s just a matter of finding the right person, someone with enough backbone and sway that Dad couldn’t just pay them off or disappear them.”</p><p>“Which is who, exactly? Who else has that kind of power? Who actually cares?”</p><p>Diego’s nostrils flare. “You’re so fucking cynical, bro,” he spits. Klaus puts his hand to his heart in mock dismay, which only makes him angrier.</p><p>“Look, I’m sorry, okay,” he says, dropping the act. He doesn’t actually like to see Diego like this. “I’m just trying to be realistic, okay, accept the facts. No one’s coming to save us.”</p><p>“I can’t believe that,” Diego says, eyes spilling over in a molten stream. The soccer ball bounces away, forgotten. They’ll get in trouble for that, later. “I c-c-can’t.”</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>
  <strong>- February, 1969 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>They’re bunkered down in a stinking fox hole, and the munitions box is empty. They’ve been cut off from the rest of the unit for six days, and six nights, and Klaus is furious. Furious that they’ve been left here, furious that they were so outgunned to begin with. Furious that after everything, everything, they’re still just bodies for the pyre. Still just bullet casings. Still just meat. </p><p>Dave’s fiddling with his dog tags, the Star of David pendant on the thin silver chain around his neck. His eyes are shiny in the pitch dark. Exhaustion dogs the edges of his mouth. The gunshot wound on his leg is festering, and it’s starting to smell. Klaus can’t risk the fire it would take to cauterise it. It’d be too late anyway.</p><p>“You ever,” he asks, pressing his lips into a dry, cracked line. His mouth splits wryly, and pills with blood. He has a tendency to get philosophical when he’s been awake like this, for days, and the fever doesn’t help. Klaus knows he’s self conscious about being annoying, but Klaus knows annoying, and Dave isn’t it. “Think maybe you lost yourself somewhere? Grew up to become the thing you hate?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Klaus says. “Every second,” he laughs, “of every day.”</p><p>“I think,” Dave whispers into the killing dark. “Truth, justice, freedom. They’re just words they used to trap us.” Klaus leans the last inch to bump their foreheads together, smiles into the rim of Dave’s skewed helmet. It hurts. “I’ve known that for a long while,” he admits quietly, and Klaus knows. He knows. Wouldn’t still be here if he thought Dave didn’t know it too, in his bones, at the ragged, rotten core of him. Didn’t live in the orbit of that wreckage. He couldn’t have borne it.</p><p>“I think I deserve to die like this,” Dave says, and Klaus tries to push closer, pull Dave into him, but there’s nothing left. There’s nothing left between them. When he looks into Klaus’ eyes, he looks almost childlike in his despair. “I don’t deserve you, though.”</p><p>“Hey,” and the laugh that comes out of him is almost a sob, “I’m not that bad.”</p><p>Dave’s hand clenches hard in his jacket. “No, I mean. You’re so beautiful.” Tears spill out over the bridge of his nose, and Klaus breaks, again, the way he’s always broken, along age-old lines. “So smart. And funny. And no matter what, you don’t let anyone tell you who to be, what to do. Don’t let anyone else think for you.</p><p>“Yeah, and look where that got me.”</p><p>Dave’s fingers tap out a sluggish rhythm on the back of Klaus’ hand. His breathing is slow, laboured, wet. He coughs, and Klaus’ whole body clenches at the volume of the sound. “No,” he says, eventually. “You stayed. You could have left at any time, but you stayed. With me.” Klaus shakes. “God, I love you.”</p><p>He can’t speak over the hole in his chest, the paralysing ache. Can’t do anything but hold on, and shake. </p><p>“You’re not your Dad,” Dave says. “You’re not me. You didn’t choose this.”</p><p>“Hey,” Klaus chatters, his teeth searing, his skin searing, “don’t talk like that, don’t - you’re not - you got lied to. We all got lied to. The axis of the world spins on lies. It’s not your fault.”</p><p>“When I’m dead-”</p><p>“Don’t,” Klaus begs. “Don’t.”</p><p>“When you go back,” Dave says, and Klaus’ body screams, wretched. The roaring inside is so, so loud. “Promise me you’ll go back. And promise me you won’t- don’t force yourself to be alone, ok? You don’t deserve to be alone.”</p><p>There aren’t words anymore, in Klaus’ head. Just this earth shattering grief. Just this scream. Every atom screaming. And the size of it. Unsurvivable.</p><p>“Next year,” Dave slurs, though Klaus doesn’t hear him.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>
  <strong>- February, 1969 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>Klaus should have known - it could never be that poetic.</p><p>When Dave dies, it’s sudden. He doesn’t get to say goodbye.</p><p><br/>
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</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>- September, 2019 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>The street is full, but they’re running, and the crowd parts, terrified. Diego drags him through the traffic, stops long enough to smash a window, steal a car.</p><p>“Ben,” Klaus gasps.</p><p>“We don’t have time.”</p><p><br/>
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</p><p>
  <strong>- January, 1969 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>Dave rolls him onto his back, forces his shoulders down with rough hands. When he sinks down again Klaus feels winded, poleaxed, consumed. Dave cups his face in his bloody hands, kisses him so bitingly Klaus feels his lip split, their mouths flooding red. He jerks upwards, inwards, frantic with this loss of control. His palms beat against the ball of Dave’s shoulders, a refusal and a demand, but he’s unrelenting, overwhelming, he’s eating Klaus alive. </p><p>Klaus keens.</p><p>“Easy, killer,” Dave grits into the scant space between them, grinds into him like an earthquake, like a napalm drop, like this violence is a promise of annihilation. Release. “Easy, killer. I’ve got you.”</p><p><br/>
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</p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>- September, 2019 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>“I don’t understand,” Luther groans. He’s a tapestry of lacerations, his face cut open. It’ll scar. “We restored the timeline, we. We fixed it.”</p><p>“No, you fucking idiot,” Five says. It’s the most panicked Klaus has seen him since he was ten. “Stupid. Stupid! I’m so fucking<em> stupid</em>!”</p><p>“Luther’s right,” Vanya says, “something must have happened.”</p><p>“We happened,” Five yells. “Life happened!” He heaves. “Did you think it would be that easy!”</p><p>“Five,” Allison grabs him, but he wrenches out of her grasp.</p><p>“There’s no - narrative causality! No set plan! Every fucking system tends towards chaos! The Handler sold us on a convenient lie and I fucking bought it! Stupid!” He kicks at a crate, smashes it, stomps. Keeps stomping. “There was nothing to restore! No fucking timeline! A butterfly can cause a hurricane? Juvenile! There are<em> billions </em> of the fucking things! It was never within my control!”</p><p>“So what,” Diego says. At least he’s stopped vomiting. “Then we can go back again, earlier, stop ourselves before-”</p><p>“No!” Five screams, deafening. “You can’t cross the same river twice! Not without the manpower of the Commission! We’re fucked! Fucked! We’ll never get it back! Do you imbeciles understand what I’m saying? It’s gone forever!”</p><p>“Patch,” Diego moans. “It never happened.”</p><p>“What?” Vanya pales.</p><p>“Claire,” Allison sinks. She looks at Klaus. He looks back. Looks into the yawning void of her. “My daughter.” </p><p>Luther rocks a little, self-soothing, though it has to hurt him.</p><p>“Gone! Poof! Never existed! Allison’s kid - Klaus’ stupid boyfriend - Diego’s masochistic fling! Luther’s fucking moon fern! Gone!”</p><p>“But,” Vanya says. “We’re still here, surely that must mean something. If it’s all gone, if it never happened, shouldn’t we, like, disappear?”</p><p>Five rounds on her, the size of him indomitable. “Why should it? Huh? Why does any of it have to mean anything? Time isn’t a fucking line, that’s the fucking problem! Our imaginations are so fucking miniscule! We’re not actors! We’re not even pawns! Our consciousness means precisely jack shit to the indifferent universe! We’re as consequential as dirt!”</p><p>Klaus breathes, numb. He doesn’t feel Allison’s fists as she pummels him. Doesn’t try to stop her. </p><p>Not even a ghost. Nothing to bring back. Nothing he could trap in his hands, even if he wanted to. Even if he needed it.</p><p>Just that boy, who hated him. </p><p>Five screams again, hits himself, keeps hitting himself. His hands claws, fists. Drops, but doesn’t stop. Luther watches him, blank.</p><p>It feels like clarity. Like sloughing off artifice. <em> I have awoken in the midst of a dream </em> , he thinks. Allison collapses. <em> I have awoken. </em></p><p>“My baby,” she sobs. “My baby.”</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>- March, 2020 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>But Five had had the gist of it. </p><p>Life happens.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>
  <strong>- September, 1968 -</strong>
</p><p> </p><p>“There must have been something,” Dave says. He’s actually naked, which is rare, whatever portents marked the start of this. Klaus revels in it, skims his hands back down the tops of his thighs under the water, tickling the fine hairs. He’s stoned enough not to feel the cold, but Dave at his back is a furnace. A purifying heat.</p><p>“Probably,” Klaus admits. “My memory isn’t great.”</p><p>“Convenient,” Dave hums, warm, skeptical, and nips at Klaus’ neck. It feels good, to be held like this. New, and bright, and cleansing. He feels clean. </p><p>Before, no matter how fucked up he got, he could never stand to have someone else behind him. Could never stand to turn his back, expose all his tender parts. Needed a knife in his hand, needed his teeth. </p><p>“Sometimes forgetting is better,” Klaus says. Dave’s hand snakes down to his dick. A light pressure, exploratory. Neither of them are under the impression his refractory period is that good, but, it’s nice. To be touched like this. </p><p>“Yeah,” Dave says, and Klaus knows he’s thinking about that village in the north of the valley. All those bodies, without skin. The kids, huddled together. The maggots. The stink. </p><p>Dave had been gone for days after that. Almost a whole week. Chasing the white rabbit, and oblivion. </p><p>Klaus hopes he found it. Or at least enough.</p><p>“Hey,” he says, and pulls away enough to turn back around again, slip into his lap, take Dave’s face in his hands and kiss him. “Don’t go anywhere. You know how needy I am.”</p><p>Dave smiles. “I would die,” he says, “for a fucking cheesburger.”</p><p>Klaus laughs. </p><p>“There’s this diner, back in Wisconsin. Near where my Momma grew up. No frills, no fucking around. Best cheeseburger I’ve ever eaten. Lotta Hank Williams in the jukebox. Simple. Classy. I’ll take you some time.”</p><p>“I don’t wanna go to Wisconsin,” Klaus pouts, but Dave is immovable.</p><p>“You’ll love it,” he insists. “It’s not boring at all. Completely your style.”</p><p>“Oh boring is fine,” Klaus tells him. Doesn’t say: you could never be boring.  “But I can’t have dairy, what would even be the point? Hey! Fuck you! I’m not kidding!”</p><p>Dave kisses him, chest shaking. Klaus threads his arms around his neck. “What about Dallas?”</p><p>“What the fuck’s in Dallas?” </p><p>“C’mon, Klaus, where’s your sense of adventure?” </p><p>“Oh!” He slaps Dave’s shoulder. “I thought of something!”</p><p>Dave nuzzles his temple, bites his earlobe, “Tell me.”</p><p>“When I was twelve, we went on this, this fucking <em> fishing trip </em>.” Dave chuckles. “Dad thought we needed to know how to feed ourselves if we ever got stuck somewhere, without rations. I said we should just, y’know, steal, but he insisted. So Mom drove us out to this weird little lake near this bumfuck nowhere town. And for some reason Luther decided he was gonna catch a catfish with his bare hands.”</p><p>“Of course,” Dave huffs, rolling his head back.</p><p>“But none of us had any idea what we were doing, so he just ended up standing up to his waist in the water for <em> six hours </em>, freezing to death. So of course he got hypothermia, and I thought, well they had those dogs? With the kegs? And I brought whiskey.”</p><p>“Twelve,” Dave mouths, and Klaus giggles.</p><p>“What? It was - it’s not like we were normal kids. And Vanya was the only one who ever paid attention during first aid, but of course Dad didn’t let her come. And anyway it was actually <em> Allison </em> who got alcohol poisoning.” Dave groans. “Diego, because he’s got some kinda hero complex, was like: <em> oh, we have to take Luther to the hospital, we can’t just let him die </em> , because Mom would never, would have just fixed it, but something had short circuited at the lakeside and she was just, standing in the shallow water, like an upright corpse, and couldn’t do anything to help <em> or </em>stop us. But he didn’t want to leave her behind, because he’s soft like that, so it was just Ben and Diego dragging them through this huge coniferous forest on a tarpaulin, because I crashed the car.”</p><p>Dave stares at him in mute wonderment.</p><p>“I could drive, there was just this deer that came out of nowhere. Anyway, Five found my fireworks. He just kept going on and on and on about all this boring physics shit, none of us were listening, but before we knew it he had literally started a forest fire.”</p><p>The noise Dave makes is disbelieving. </p><p>“Thankfully we found a lake, and a boat, so that we didn’t have to put Luther <em> back </em> in the water, but Mom was actually kind of really heavy? So it started sinking pretty fast. Five kept insisting he could douse the fire, and also that the whole thing was <em> my </em> fault, so he disappeared, not that any of us noticed at that point. Allison was crying because she was too drunk, and Ben was having a panic attack. Which was when I found the third bottle of whiskey. Apparently we were less than a mile from the closest town? And the fire didn’t really spread cause it was raining pretty hard, so the cops showed up just before dawn. Five had apparently attempted to steal a wheelbarrow. Luther got pneumonia and Dad was <em> so </em>angry. I’ve never seen him that angry. Though one of the cops came a close second when Diego punched me in the backseat, on the drive home.”</p><p>Klaus sighs wistfully. “It would have been better if Vannie was there. But you can’t win ‘em all.”</p><p>“Wow,” Dave says, incredulous. “That’s. That actually explains a lot about you.” He does a double take, alarmed. “<em> That’s </em> your happiest memory?”</p><p>“Yeah,” Klaus says. Of course it is. “Just us. No Dad, no Mom. No <em> Pogo </em>. Just us, in the middle of nowhere. No one even died! It was so much fun.”</p><p>Dave laughs, incredulous. “It’s gonna take me a while to process this. Sorry.”</p><p>“Take your time,” Klaus says, and settles in. He feels buoyant with the memory, the heat of Dave’s skin. </p><p>“Hey,” he says suddenly. Dave looks at him, a little dazed. <em> Fuck it. </em> “I love you,” he says. </p><p>After a moment, Dave grins, a supernova, his body coming to life under Klaus, making the world spin.</p><p>“I love you too, you crazy son of a bitch.” Laughing, both of them. “I am so stupid in love with you.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>honestly I don't know if I pulled this off w any degree of finesse so if you think it sucks, know I wholeheartedly agree</p><p>u ever get halfway thru writing something n realise ur just Catharting? grief is such a bitch :V</p></blockquote></div></div>
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